Thursday, January 25, 2018

Finding Dreamland

The room is empty-ish. There aren't a lot of furniture; but there are people walking back and forth. I think it's my house - though I have never set my eyes on it before. We're on the top floor. Who are these people? I don't seem worried. I mean, I am me; but I am also an observer, outside. I don't exactly know what I am thinking. Or I have forgotten it upon waking. I think I see myself from outside. I am not sure. Is it a feeling? Or does it mean something? Being outside and inside at the same time?

James Franco strolls in from one end, as cool as you please (now where did he spring from? something I watched recently, no doubt) and says a line I have heard him deliver before, with that ever familiar crinkled-eyes smile. And then he's gone. People just talk and laugh like they never do in this side of life. There is no connection between anything. There was a sighting of an old heart throb. A fleeting image, but one that stayed.

I come down (or watch myself come down) the staircase and the building grows into a rocky valley with a waterfall nearby. Very green surroundings (yes, it isn't black and white). Right out of a painting. I am not surprised; no one else seems to be either. Everything seems natural; everything is real - the odd appearances and disappearances and transformations are nothing to be concerned about. Maybe the transformation was smooth; it is just that I remember it in jerks and jumps.

It didn't occur to me at that time, but days later, it comes to me: I used to know a house in the top floor where furniture was scarce, with a staircase outside. It never morphed into a waterfall, though. Not that I knew of.

I have gone to sleep in this world and woken up in a different world, like an avatar in Pandora, where everything is different, and science as we know it doesn't apply all the time. That's why there are no surprises. It is as expected. It's our entry to the alternate universe. Through the looking glass? We aren't back here. Only our shell is. We're over there. Light years away. Sometimes I wake up into a nightmare. Perfectly natural.

In fact, when I go to bed (here) in a few hours, I will wake up in that world and say to myself - What a weird dream! I was sitting at a table with something on my lap and punching it with my fingers and calling myself a writer (ha! ha!) Oh, there was a funny word - 'blog'. I guess I made it up myself. What a strange world, where waterfalls don't grow out of buildings and James Franco doesn't wander in from one end or vanish at the other...!

Which one of these is real?

I think I'm going nuts.

Monday, January 15, 2018

Prison

​I've built my prison
Brick by brick
Cutting off branches,
Burning bridges,
Turning a deaf ear,
Shutting my eyes.

A window I've left
For the sun and the wind;
I peer through the hole
At the sliver of the sky
Across which strolls
A slice of the moon.

The visitors thinned​.​
The calls diminished.
What right have I
To complain of ​fate:
I'd asked for this,
I got what I wished.

From their memories
I've now vanished.
From their lives
I've been erased.
I got what I asked
For I'd asked for this.


Sunday, January 7, 2018

The Restless Mind

Where does this restlessness stem from, and why does it not go away?

A constant state of discontent, the feeling of having left tasks undone, the shadow of a deadline over my head; no matter how much I run towards my goal, it continues to remain at an arm's length. One more step, just one more. Just one more thing to do before I can stop.

Why are we never satisfied? Never at peace?

What next? What next? The tiresome search, the incessant longing, the evolving ambitions.

Am I stuck here with no apparent escape, forever struggling to break free, torn between burning desires and fear of change? Every year I find something new, hoping that it is my deliverance. Every year it passes and I'm left behind. Hope – the damnedest thing!

Is it something to do with age, or the fact of, in all likelihood, being closer to the end than the beginning? The fear that time is running out, and will be gone before I can figure things out? Are we supposed to figure Life out at all?

Among the many things I dreamed of at different stages of life, even my so-called achievements lost their sheen soon enough, because new quests and hunger took their place. In spite of everything, are we expected to leave, feeling unsatisfied, incomplete, failed, at the end, because of that one unfinished task?

Why is it that every day the exasperating questions Where am I ? What am I doing? Why am I here? keep pounding inside, giving no peace? Will a person who has found her raison d'être be really content? Or will there be one final incomplete thing for her to be sorry about?

When will my search for the me-shaped hole in the universe be complete? And what if I never find it? And if I ever do get there, wherever there is, will I be satisfied? At peace? Or will I pry myself loose and go wandering again?